Reviews

Urinetown is not your conventional, happy musical (as you are informed several times during the show). Dark, bizarre and having a dreadful title, it is more than a little different. Melville Theatre’s latest production is playing to full houses who are delighted with this odd, but well-presented show.

Set during a drought, where people are being forced to play exorbitant sums to use public amenities, people who try to “pee for free” are being “shipped off” to the mysterious “Urinetown”, never to be heard from again.

Opera Australia sure enjoys its Elijah Moshinsky productions. When superstar Verdi specialist Leo Nucci pulled out from the role of Rigoletto, it wasn’t just the cast that changed. The company also chose to switch its revival to Moshinsky’s crowd-pleasing interpretation, famous for its La Dolce Vita-inspired design. First staged in 1991, the production brought an opulence to this dark work and it was a little Italian minor that stole the scene in the third act.

“It is the business of art to be dangerous,” writes Adam Cook in the foreword to his production of The Rolling Stone, a play that challenges the religious, cultural and political powers that “struggle with the notion of homosexuality”.

The Sleeping Beauty is pure opulence on every level. Dance, music, scenery and costumes all combine to make a memorable experience for all ages.   

David McAllister has taken the much-loved gem of the classical ballet repertoire and made it his own without destroying the original intention of Marius Petipa and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.